


nestling

by pluvia



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 23:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluvia/pseuds/pluvia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ME3. Dreams don’t always come true. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nestling

Two strangers sit in a skycar traveling above the Presidium. They are careful to avoid any eye contact that could be interpreted as purposeful. This is easier to accomplish than both thought possible, though harder to endure than both imagined.

The driver is fixated on the space ahead, even though traffic is sparse tonight. The passenger feigns fascination with the glowing nightlife outside her windowside; she’s already seen it countless times before. The silence they share is uncomfortable only because both feel compelled to break it. The meticulous neglect of one another is an unsteady thing, threatening to tip into an accidental met glance at any second.

When the atmosphere borders on oppressive, the turian driver attempts the task of speaking first. His mandibles part and he intakes a short breath, quick and sharp, as if doing otherwise would cause him to lose his courage. He rigidly straightens in the driver’s seat, still focused on the traffic ahead and not at the human passenger beside him. He unconsciously speeds up the car, but it’s just as well—it means putting more distance between them and the clinic, more quickly.

The passenger watches all of this from the corner of her eye, uncaring. She purposefully twists her body to better angle towards the passenger window, refusing to acknowledge the driver’s rush of courage. He notices this action and the precarious tautness supporting his back disappears, like a great dune scattering into the winds.

When Garrus settles back into the driver’s seat and releases a defeated, shaky sigh, Shepard looks back out into the night. The scenery goes by in a whirl, indistinct lights and colors blending together like dancing phantasms, and hurting him can almost help her ignore the ghostly, aching pain just below her stomach.

* * *

He doesn’t recognize Liara when she advances up to him in the clinic’s waiting room. Instead he thinks it's one of the human nurses approaching; the humans have a tendency to dart to and fro, like they had something to hide or somewhere urgent to get to. Asari possess a certain patient grace, one that Liara lacks when she tramples to a stop in front of the dazed, seated turian.

“I came as soon as I could. How is she?” Liara asks, breaths short and nervous.

He stares absently at an imaginary spot that is both next to her and through her. Though he’s now aware that it’s Liara and not one of the nurses standing before him, his new challenge involves puzzling out how Liara could have known about this.

“Is she all right? Garrus?” A longer pause. “Are _you_ all right?”

He sent Liara a text, he finally recalls. Somewhere between Shepard having a breakdown and finding himself under the piercing, artificial lights of the clinic, he instinctively searched Liara out for help. It’s much too late for the asari to assist in any way, but that she had arrived at all is something he should be thankful for.

His focus returns. He’s sure that Liara thinks he’s in shock. He doesn’t feel that way. In fact, he doesn’t feel much at all.

“I’m fine. And I don’t know about Shepard. I’ve just been sitting out here. I… she wanted it, all of a sudden, and I just couldn’t…” Garrus trails off, still piecing together the events of the last few hours for himself. Liara hurriedly takes a seat next to him, not bothering to ask if it’s occupied by anyone else.

“You did what you could,” Liara comforts once she’s settled in, extending a hand towards Garrus. There is a second of hesitation when she first reaches out, as if touching him would be unwise, but she completes the motion and places her hand on his shoulder. “And thank you for contacting me. I… I was worried about you two.”

Garrus stares at the asari. He finds her words troubling.

His history with Liara was long, long enough for him to remember how she used to be. It’s not wide-eyed innocence that sparks in her eyes anymore, but a worn cunning that reminds him more of a salarian shopkeeper than the asari archeologist he knew. It was strange that he never noticed that until now, even after all the two had experienced.

They had fought together. Bled together. Seen their homeworlds burn. Shared bits of happiness, once in a while. Their trust transcended even those between turian soldiers.

He knows these things. He knows her. Liara has always been there for him, for all of them. But that’s exactly what’s offensive and something rises in his chest: a black, shadowy creature that last came to life when a bareface named Sidonis had sold out those he held dear.

He doesn’t hate Liara. He never could. What he hates is the little secret he knows all too well: that Liara loves Shepard. That Liara might not have come quite as quickly if it had been Garrus undergoing surgery. And that Liara, through everything, will always love her.

And if Shepard had loved Liara as much—instead of falling for a rebellious turian— this wouldn’t have happened.

“—really look like you could use some rest,” Liara is saying. “I can take over for you. And—”

(I’ll seduce Shepard when she’s feeling low. It will be an intense, sensual experience that hard forms like yours, grotesque and barbed, could never deliver. You’ll never know about it, except for the few times when you’re holding each other after and the tightness in her limbs lets you know that she wants something more. But you’ve seen those lingering glances from time to time, haven’t you? When she looks at a being that is more like her. You know, deep down. You’re both too different. Forms that don’t fit. Beast and beast. But one beast actually belongs, and I can give her everything you cannot, and everything you can. After all, you can’t even provide her with a fami—)

“No. Thanks, Liara,” Garrus adds absently. “I’ll be fine.”

Liara is the one to stare at him now, her blue eyes deep with knowledge of things he can’t begin to guess at. And though he still believes his thoughts are his own, he also remembers what had occurred to him just a few seconds earlier: they know each other too well.

He can fool many with his lax demeanor. Liara is one of the very few he cannot.

“Garrus… listen.” Her hand squeezes his shoulder, once. “It’s me.”

A crushing guilt suddenly rises in him, devouring and erasing his earlier revulsion. Garrus hunches forward in his seat and the blank, confused look in his eyes that Liara observed when she first came in disappears.

A wail threatens to escape his throat, though he doesn’t understand why; it’s an instinct, much like how his sister, as a baby, had cried even when she didn’t understand why she was doing so.

“I just don’t know if we did the right thing. I just don’t know. I don’t know if everything can be right again.”

Liara’s hand is still there. It’s warm, soothing. He doesn’t know why he didn’t trust her from the start.

“It will be. No matter what. You’ll both make it through this.”

He doesn’t cry that night. They sit side by side in silence until the doctor comes back out to tell them the news, and when Liara’s hand falls away Garrus can only wonder how everything important to him tends to just disappear, with a departure so quiet and so utterly meaningless.

* * *

When she places a shaky hand atop her barely-rounded stomach and still nothing kicks against her palm, the sob that she has been biting back nearly leaks from her trembling lips.

* * *

When the couple feels older than they are, they finally force themselves to talk about it.

“It.” That’s all this creature is now, at least to Garrus.

“Maybe we should just try and have it,” he starts because otherwise she would have studied the living room walls until they cracked. He doesn’t sound keen on the pitch and neither is she. Trusting things to luck and miracles leads to disappointment, often fatal. She’s seen the corpses of those that blindly believed.

“No,” she replies in a squeak, only because she has to force the word out. She’s known for too long now what she has to do, and articulating that decision tears something from her.

The quiet that follows makes her feel all the more helpless. She doesn’t know what she expects from him. When the ice bobbing in Garrus’ brandy crackles, it’s so loud that she thinks it echoes.

“Then just go through with it.” He guzzles the drink in his talons, reminded of the alcohol’s presence. He hasn’t had a drop of alcohol for months—ever since she had told him the news—but it goes down easily for him. After the glass is empty, Garrus sighs wearily and decides to speak to her feet instead. “Spirits, just go through with it.”

“I… I need some more time.”

“Time, Shepard?” Disbelief. “The longer you think it over, the more attached you’ll get to it.”

She begins to fidget. Her fingers nervously twist and pull against one another in her lap. “We owe the baby that much.”

“What we owe to it is a decision.” He sets the tumbler on the nearby end-table with a heavy thump. They had picked out that table together, she recalls for no reason. It has the same color as the crib that’s buried away in a storage bin in their room.

“I know,” she manages and digs her fingers into her palms to maintain focus. “But I… I just need to… to...”

“You need to go through with whatever you decide. That’s what you need to do.”

Her heartbeat rises to a panicked jog. The sureness of his advice feels threatening. She can feel her face flush with blood and heat.

“I am. I _will_.”

He still doesn’t look directly at her, but she sees enough doubt on his face that her unexplainable anxiety infuses into the air surrounding her, pressing in, suffocating. It becomes too much and before he can say anything more, she lances off the chair to her feet. She paces with frenzied, sharp steps that clack against their floors and continues to tug at her fingers.

“But this isn’t just something we can… I mean, we can’t have the baby just because. We have to be responsible and… what if everything turns out like—” she swallows and blinks, the vision that had sprung to her mind too horrible to recall: a mix of all the deceased turians she had seen, and for some reason the twisted mannequin form of Saren in his final moments lingering in the darkness behind her eyelids.

“Then it sounds like your mind is made up,” he says impassively, and the same battle-coldness that leaks into his words reminds her of the turian that had been at her side during some of their worst firefights against the galaxy.

This is not the Garrus she needs.

“It is. It is, but… this isn’t just any life, don’t you get it?” She stops her aimless wandering and stamps up to him. Her temper flares for no reason other than panic, and she’s not sure if it’s because he’s already accepted everything or because she thinks she has, too. “This isn’t… this isn’t just any life, right? This is the life that we made. Together.”

His mandibles work in thought, as if trying to gnaw on her plea. That he doesn’t appear moved frightens her all over again, and from that rush of liquid cold in her collarbone she finally comprehends that a part of her wants him to stop all this. To give her a way out, to be there for her like he always—

“But you’re right,” he says after a long while, lifting his head for the first time. “We can’t risk it.”

Some part of her breaks, just a tiny bit.

“I know. I know. But then we’d have to junk all of the things we bought. So..." she gives him a shaky smile, one that doesn't feel the slightest bit real on her face. "So maybe we should try to have the baby, after all.”

“Shepard…” She doesn’t hear the mounting frustration in his voice.

“And we can just decide what to do after. We can… we can afford the hospital costs. Ha, maybe we can actually try and get some royalties from the vids like you said before, right? We’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.”

“You’re not making any sense, Shepard.”

“But then… I don’t know how we’d take care of the baby once it gets bigger. If there’s anything wrong with it we would—FUCK!”

The sudden exclamation is enough to startle Garrus into a wide-eyed stare. He really was like a bird sometimes, no mater how he denies it; the birds from Earth she had seen always cocked their heads like that. She continues on obliviously, her hands relentlessly kneading together, nails indenting into skin enough to draw a shallow trickle of blood.

“I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t mean to say that, Garrus. I didn’t mean to call our baby that.” A sob, full of guilt, wracks her body. “I promised—myself—that I wouldn’t—call the baby that. I—”

“Hey. It’s okay. Calm down.” She doesn’t know when exactly he had stood up, but he’s looming over her, and his voice is low, very low, and comforting enough that the interruption quiets her.

She’s the one to look at his feet now.

“I’m sorry, Garrus. I’m sorry that I’m doing this, but I just can’t seem to…”

And suddenly she breaks, for real this time, her legs giving way as if a stray bullet had snapped through her spine. He’s at her side instantly and she feels the heaviness in her heart crumble because it doesn’t matter how much they bicker, or how it seems like he's not taking her side sometimes, or where the war is: in the end, he is always there for her when she needs him most.

She presses her cheek against his forehead, seeking him out. He grips her tightly, all his sharp edges yielding against her body. The carapace digs into the skin just above her cheekbone, hard enough to make her remember there are other forms of pain, and she cries, and cries, and cries.

* * *

Through the buzzing drone of the bathroom lights and the echoes of her choking vomit into the toilet bowl, she hears a bell.

* * *

Text exchange

Garrus Vakarian (Location: Earth)  
Liara T’Soni (Location: Cannot find current location)

01:05: G: I’d like to chat a bit, if you’re available.

01:51: L: Sorry for the late reply. Are you still there?

01:51: G: It’s all right. Sorry to bother you so late.

01:51: L: Just respond when you have the time. I’ll be around.

01:52: L: Not at all. I have a lot of other matters to take care of, as you know.

01:52: L: And by the way, I did receive the news. Congratulations to the both of you.

01:52: L: I was planning to contact you two sooner and drop by with a few things, but this conference has been a nightmare.

01:53: G: Thanks. Actually, I was planning to ask you about that bit of news.

01:53: G: I think seeing a turian and a human together is becoming a bit more common.

01:54: G: But I’ve never heard anything about children between them.

01:55: G: I was just wondering if you would have happened to stumble across anything about that.

01:55: G: I don’t have anyone else to ask about this.

02:09: G: Is something the matter?

02:17: L: There haven’t been many documented human-turian relations because of the First Contact War. A scan of my databases is not turning up anything.

02:18: G: For some reason, I expected that.

02:18: L: I’ll have access to better resources soon. I can look back into it then.

02:19: G: Thanks.

02:30: L: I don’t mean to pry, but is there something that brought this on?

02:32: L: I’m sorry if that was not appropriate.

02:33: G: We’re pretty sure the baby isn’t going to make it.

02:34: G: The doctor said that we should just abort. Complications and what not.

02:36: L: I’m so sorry.

02:36: L: Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?

02:37: G: No. I might wake her up.

02:37: L: We should talk. Call me.

02:41: L: You can’t keep doing this.

02:42: L: Call me.

02:45: L: Stop pushing us away. We’re here for you.

02:46: L: I’ll look into this but you have to call me. I’ll be waiting.

03:01: G: Sorry.

-Transcript end-

* * *

After the appointment, it takes him three nights to learn that he should just lie awake in the dark and wait for the nightmare. When her subdued whimpers start he nudges her awake, as if reality is more forgiving.

* * *

They decide to keep the crib accessories simple, though the spoken compromises leading to this choice are few. Their fights follow predictable trends, though neither of them yet realizes it.

Conflicts of importance cause her to be militant, snappy. He endures it without sound because he knows well enough that nothing could silence “Commander” Shepard—not war, not peacetime, and certainly not him. She is his leader and not his lover during these tiffs, and he knows it’s the Commander when she hisses with quiet threat that things must go her way. Like how the crib has to be made of dark wood: cherry or espresso to match their floors. Like how the crib should have dimensions slightly larger than standard, but still convertible. Like how the crib belongs in the living room so the baby can get constant attention.

He listens to her demands and finally makes a request of his own when she’s finished dispensing orders. He wants to choose the accessory for “Shepard’s” crib, and on this he will not budge. Not even for her.

She relents but is in his ear the entire while they comb the store, reminders bullet-quick and voluminous. Choose something that was simple, something that matched the crib, something that paired with the image in her head. Though his search is not a long one and ends at a bin next to the cashier, her badgering is irritant enough that he purposefully thrusts the discovered object towards her: dangerously, as if suppressing an urge to deal her a physical blow. She’s indifferent to his actions not because she knows he would never harm her, but because she recognizes that the accessory is none of the things she wants.

It’s a crib bell, one of those vintage doodads that were popular in vids from a few decades back. There is no brightness or shine to draw attention to the tiny object, smaller than her thumb. It twirls to an invisible wind, not heavy enough to sing. She keeps her eyes on him as she takes the bell from his expectant talons. She cannot hide her displeasure, even though curiosity is rapidly becoming her forefront emotion; there’s enough somberness behind his challenging glare to let her know that the crib accessory means more than what its form suggested. But the bell is a faded, forlorn thing. It is much too old and too real for a baby, she thinks as she brings it for a closer study. Her mouth opens with a rejection at the edge of her tongue when he abruptly says turian mothers vocalize to the newborn, in a manner that reminded him of bells and chimes.

Silence, and not refusal, is her eventual answer. She returns the bell to him with a single short nod.

When they are placing the order for the crib—one that doesn’t quite match the one in her mind but fits well with the accessories they bought— they stand side-by-side and share small, awkward smiles without looking to one another. And by the time the two leave the store they are hand-in-hand again, earlier unhappiness forgotten. They know their arguments are fiery and meaningless. The couple is young, rich in ardor but not in understanding. There’s still too much to know and so much longer for them to grow into each other.

When Garrus insists she be the one to keep the bell, she squeezes his talons and says that she’ll remember all the songs they sing to her.

* * *

“It’s positive,” she announces that morning, giddiness bubbling into her voice.

He tears his attention away from the assortment of papers cluttering his desk, eyes as wide as she’s ever seen it. He pushes away from the table to get to his feet and she knows he’s still trying to play it suave, but the chair lets out a rebellious screech just loud enough to tell her how he feels. It’s been far too long since she’s seen him off-guard and the sight of it just makes her smile widen further.

“Are you sure?” There’s baited hope in his words, excitement just ready to spill over.

“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” She isn’t able to hold back a sputtering chuckle that’s disbelieving despite her words. “I checked over and over again. I’m absolutely sure.”

The shock recedes from his eyes, like a spring uncoiling, and in its place is a self-mocking glint that only she knows.

“I guess I really _should_ go and clean my rifle collection.”

She rushes forward and smashes him with a hug that’s practically a takedown. They stay together like this, long enough that at some point he makes a joke about carapace having its limits. She isn’t listening but giggles into his chest anyway, and when he gently lifts her and she’s swept into the air her laugh is innocent and young, because she’s too drunk on joy and life and dreams coming true.

-End-


End file.
